New music
peter.quinn
Nobody could ever accuse pianist Vijay Iyer of having narrow tastes. This highly anticipated follow-up to his award-winning 2009 album, Historicity, runs the gamut from Heatwave's über-smooth slow jam, “The Star of the Story”, to the tricky contrapuntal games of Henry Threadgill's “Little Pocket Size Demons”. In the two and a half years since the making of Historicity the trio has been on the road pretty much constantly, and you sense from the very opening bars of Iyer's self-penned “Bode” an even more refined rhythmic concept, a greater attention to textural detail, and a more intense attack Read more ...
joe.muggs
Londoner Yemi Olagbaiye is the model of a new generation musician for whom the dissolution of genre categories means not homogenisation but an opportunity for greater individuality. Olagbaiye grew up playing guitar music, then moved on to drum'n'bass, but really found his voice when he moved into a fusion of electronic and organic instruments, inspired on the one hand by UK garage and its offspring (dubstep, grime, funky), and on the other by the neo-psychedelia of Radiohead, Four Tet and Caribou. Watch Blacksmif's "...And the Sun Rose Out"His productions are lush and immersive, but Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
It ended with Annie Clark on her back, being passed around the audience like a volleyball. Scrubbing at her guitar, the squall didn’t stop. As encores go it was pretty memorable, the confirmation that Clark – as St Vincent – has arrived. Earlier in the set she’d remarked that she was last at the Empire four years ago, playing in The National. Now she’s selling it out.Her success, including the appearance of last year's Strange Mercy on many best-of-2011 lists, has come via a circuitous route. Born in Oklahoma and now living in Brooklyn, Clark graduated from high school in Texas and entered Read more ...
igor.toronyilalic
Freud would have loved the final night of Reverb 2012's opening weekend. First came a screening of a mad early Surrealist film from Germaine Dulac and Antonin Artaud, in which a priest chases a woman's breasts that have turned into two seashells. Then came the even madder sight of the Estonian Television Girls Choir dressed up in stripey national dress, coyly jellyfishing around the Roundhouse stage during their a cappella piece, while their long-haired conductor, Aarne Saluveer, beat time on an old metal plate. A dream logic was in fact at play throughout the evening. Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Over the years, Sinead O’Connor has put her fan base though the mill but, with her ninth album, may have redeemed herself. Quite apart from her many well-publicized personal eccentricities, those who have been waiting for her to make an album that’s stylistically akin to her early material rather than, say, a collection of reggae numbers of Irish folk, should now be happy. Together with her first husband and long term collaborator John Reynolds, with whom she created her debut The Lion and the Cobra back in 1987, O’Connor delivers 10 songs freighted with passion, raw emotion and occasional Read more ...
Russ Coffey
The way Marina Diamandis was tweeting last year – samples include “I hate pop” and “I want to disappear into a k-hole of Cheetos and beer” – some were half expecting the girl who used to be pop’s Next Big Thing to give up. Not that her debut album, The Family Jewels, did badly exactly but, after all the hype, anything short of becoming a mini-Gaga was destined to be a disappointment. But Marina’s made of tougher stuff. She’s back, and this time around, she seems to really mean business.The Welsh prodigy has apparently thrown the kitchen sink at her new album, Electra Heart. With a production Read more ...
Ismene Brown
First it's Golden Globes, then Oscars, or it's Grammys, then Brits - you can hardly go by a Sunday this time of year without another set of awards. But which ones count? Who are the judges?The experts on theartsdesk (judges, some of them - schmoozers, all of them) have come up with a comprehensive diary of the performing arts awards dinners (and glass-of-wine flybys) that you can attend during the year if you know the right people in theatre, film and TV. We also pooled our considerable experience as awards panellists to give you a credit rating for each - if you take the slightest notice of Read more ...
John M. Gómez
The legacy and influence of black music has led to a unique exhibition in South London. The South London Black Music Archive features memorabilia, listening posts, and a fascinating map of local musical landmarks.Visitors to Peckham Space are invited to trace their own lineage by geographically locating memories of record shops, bars and pirate radio stations that have touched several generations of South Londoners. In exchange visitors are thanked with a copy of a beautifully designed LP – a soundscape of inheritance in which members of the youth mentoring programme Leaders of Tomorrow share Read more ...
peter.quinn
Where the creative interconnections between hip hop, jazz and soul are concerned, Robert Glasper proves himself a master on Black Radio. Featuring an impressive roll call of guest singers and rappers, the pianist has finally made the album which brings together all of his musical predilections into a single whole, and the results are outstanding.With three Blue Note albums in the bag - Canvas (2005), In My Element (2007) and the Grammy-nominated Double Booked (2009) - the pianist clearly feels he's demonstrated his bona fide jazz chops, and devotes this first full-length album from his Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Accompanying herself with the violin she hung from the mic stand, the Canadian songwriter Kathleen Edwards performed “Goodnight, California” - the last track from her 2008 album Asking For Flowers - in the sensual rasp of the late night gin-drunk. The song is a sprawling, beautifully-realised portrait of loneliness, and the tightness of Edwards’ backing band only increased its eerie claustrophobia. To her right, the imposing presence of long-time collaborator Gord Tough covered for Edwards as she switched to guitar, and together their instruments squealed and dueled their way through an Read more ...
Russ Coffey
For those unfamiliar with his work, Stephin Merritt is like a modern-day Cole Porter: prolific, highly camp, and with a genius for beautifully crafted witty three-minute songs. He performs with the 6ths, The Gothic Archies, Future Bible Heroes as well under his own name. However it is with The Magnetic Fields that he has achieved greatest recognition. I'm here to discuss their new album, Love at the Bottom of the Sea, out early next month. Fans are hoping that it might match the brilliance of Merritt's magnum opus, 1999’s triple, 69 Love Songs, where he exhausted every permutation of romance Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Rodrigo y Gabriela’s flamenco gymnastics have gained such a reputation over the past couple of years, it’s been suggested that watching them is like being at a circus. Ever since these two Mexican buskers came over to Europe and started dazzling with their near impossible heavy-metal-on-nylon-strings routine, audiences have been left drop-jawed at their speed and exuberance. But, unless Rod and Gab want to end up as a novelty, they know their current routine can only take them so far. Their solution? A slight change of direction and a bunch of musicians called C.U.B.A.Area 52, released last Read more ...